Looking gewd.
Yello.
This be the Greek again. So as Im sure you heard… We were in studio last weekend recording the drums and bass guitar for our amazing new Hiphop compilation album. I hope you are all as keen for these gangsta beats as I am. If this does not tickle you fancey, dont be afriad. We have not convinced Rous to wear baggy jeans and basketball jerseys, and so have decided the Hiphop is not the direction to go in.
We have however started working on our Alternative Rock EP: First & Foremost. Filled with music you know and love. And things you’ve never heard.
We are very proud of how our music is sounding, and we cant wait for you to hear the final product… We’re also quite keen to hear the final product. Here’s a picture from the live room in the studio where Rous and I spent most of our waking hours playing our hearts out. It was emotional. Even though Nick was not able to join us, as he was busy being a fairy in the town of Graham, he did manage to send us some long and meaningful words of inspiration (Clearly the Shakespeare’s doing him good) that touched our heartstrings and made us perform as if we had at least one fan looking forward to our music. Taylor then informed me we have at least three. so now I’m happy.
For the record…-ing
Today is Monday. After a fairly atrocious week (for me at least), things managed to pick up this past weekend in the joy and accomplishment departments. If you’ve been following up on us, as I hope you have been, you’ll know that I’m talking about our time spent in studio on Saturday and Sunday recording tracks for our EP, First and Foremost.
This paragraph was going to be about recording, but now it is about me passing my driver’s, which is what happened earlier today. Breathe in deeply. In your mind’s eye, imagine a strategically shaved orang-utan in semi-formal clothing break dancing. This is as close a mental image of me after my test as it is possible to have. Cherish this image. Keep it close to your heart and call upon it in times of hardship. This is my gift to you.
This paragraph is going to be about recording. Thanks to our homie4life Kenneth Burnell (AKA Kenni), we were able to spend some more time in SAE’s Neve studio. Haven’t heard of it? It’s pretty underground. Legitimately. Around two stories, I’d approximate. The Neve is one of SAE’s finest and largest studios, and we’ve grown somewhat of a soft spot for it.
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The Coldbert Report
Alright well, I’m a little bit sick but otherwise in a good space to write a little splurge (I didn’t think ‘splurge’ was an actual word until my blackberry didn’t underline it as misspelled like right now) about what’s currently cooking in Forefront’s kitchen.
Firstly, if you’re in Cape Town and you’re all like “uuugh its so cold here its raining its freezing I wanna go somewhere warm its too cold naaaaaaww”, which may or may not have reflected my very own thoughts/public exclamations recently, you should stop and think about how lucky we are to live in Cape Town where even in Winter there’s some lovely sunshine and vitamin D goodness all up on your skin. You should really stop and take a second to think about all the truly unfortunate droves of people chilling up in GRAHAMSTOWN for the Arts Festival where the weather is severrrrrrrely chilly. I’m currently up performing in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and let me tell you, I’d dig to swing by Cape Town (just a chilled 12 hour bus ride) for a bit of warmth. Also, hit me up if you’re in Grahamstown and have access to a heater or fireplace. Or even bodyheat. I’m very cold.
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“Untitled” (Your Cure For The Monday Blues)
Gooooooood Monday everybody! Crawling out from the hole he once came from, once again, it’s time for you to hear a word or two from… Me.
Hope you all had a legendary weekend, and that for those of you that are on a decent holiday, that you’re enjoying the nuts out of that. Big news for today’s blog… (Drumrolls, confetti, fireworks and a collection of your female relatives dancing to a Beyonce number) THE SONGLIST. While the weekend was going down I managed to take an epic trip into Jason’s schedule to put down ideas and pre prod tracks for the final song. He then slapped some synth and drums on ‘dem tracks and it’s actually starting to take some good shape on tape (I’m practising this whole “rhyming” thing, I’ve heard it’s good for writing lyrics). Hopefully you’ll think it sounds as cool as I do. The song is currently under the name, “Untitled”. Creative, yes, but if lyrics take enough shape to throw any special words at it, I’ll schwing those words your way.
So here it is, in no particular order. (more…)
Greekings
Greekings Greetings.
Hope you all are shwell. For all of you awaiting the release of our currently nonexistent EP, I have some good news for you. But first, let me tell you all about what an EP is… cause my friends are slower than most, and don’t seem to understand.
An EP (these days) is a round piece of plastic in a somewhat minimal selection of packaging. This plastic, when placed in hipster devices such as CD players and Mac Book Pros, spins around a lot and by the power of lasers (FIRING MY LASER) [That thing you use to annoy cats when you have too much free time] numbers start changing on a screen and music starts to appear from speakers. These plastic rings will soon (probably in not too soon) be available to you and that crazy old lady that lives next door for a small nominal fee. I am also fairly sure I heard your granny mention how she wants one, so you better buy her a few. Grannys love EPs. Although in their day they were vinyl, and none of them contained dubstep.
Firstly: We are going into studio next weekend! 😀 The ginger and myself are very keen to put our rhythm onto tape. This will put us one step closer to bringing you the magic final product.
Show and Tell.
Well, last night we had a really sick gig at TheRussian’s Cause4Paws event out in Durbanville. We’ve played a gig there before, and have now been offered to play a couple of gigs out there and made some cool connections, as well as getting some rad crowd response. Definitely worth the trip.
Meanwhile, Forefront have been preparing to record drums and bass at SAE Studios in the very near future, so we’re deep into our preproduction for the 8 tracks we’ll be recording for our first EP. We’ve planned some cool stuff for the EP, but it takes loads of planning and stuff, so it’s still in the early stages, but some cool stuff is definitely coming your way soon. Definitely.
The coolest thing that being involved in the local music scene has showed us is that SA has some mad crazy talent. It’s awesome to see people that we know doing some very very cool stuff on the music front, and we’re working to be a part of it all. We’re all quite inspired at the moment. :’)
We’re in the process of confirming some gigs, so keep in touch for details.
See you all soon.
Nick
Charity Drive
Good morning
*Afternoon. How I do enjoy being on holiday. I’ve decided to get up, at last, and do the write thing by making this post. By like, writing it.
Today is Thursday. I know this because yesterday was Wednesday. And because I just checked. Tomorrow is Friday, and we’ll be practising one last time before Cause4Paws this Sunday. For those of you who don’t know, Cause4Paws is a charity event being hosted by The Russian to raise money for The Lucky Lucy Foundation. It will be featuring a line up of 13 bands performing from 14:00 – 20:00, including us. For those of you who don’t know, The Lucky Lucy Foundation is an organisation which looks after abused and neglected animals. They cover rescue, treatment, rehabilitation of the animals and help to find loving homes for them.
It feels great getting involved in an event like this. Yes, The Russian is in Durbanville. Yes, that is mildly inconvenient. But it’s about much more than that. Seeing the amount of sponsors and bands that have gotten involved, seeing the effort being put into the event and the passion people have for the charity, and getting involved yourself, is worth the mild inconvenience. Seeing what people can accomplish if they’re willing to put in effort is inspiring. After all the effort that’s already been put in, the least we can do is overcome the mild inconvenience and support this event. (more…)
And Go!
Hey errboddeh! It’s fatboy here again to tell you about all the new exciting things we’ve been doing and the events coming up.
Forefront has become a split mission of late, with each member being assigned separate jobs going forward:
Nick and I have been doing fairly similar stuff, namely, writing and getting shows for the next while. You’ll catch us at The Russian in Durbanville for the Cause for Paws charity gig on the 24th and Zula Bar in Cape Town on the 30th of June. Keep an eye out for more developments!
There should be a full live acoustic set coming your way in the next while, covers, originals, and exclusive acoustic originals included. We’re also putting some cool new material together, as well as some more underground ideas, but those things are for us to know and for you all to find out 🙂
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Antics
Greetings.
It’s been a while since we’ve been on stage for all you awesome crazy fans which has made us all quite sad. This is partly due to exams, and also partly due to the recording process we are about to enter.
Over the past few weeks we have had some serious band meetings (No Sikipedia jokes, nor straying off topic to talk about how Nick and Tay were ”kidnapped” by their friends the night before and forced to go on some crazy mission where they eventually leveled up in some wizardly fashion and are now holders of some insane title ending in 5000. [Moments where Rous reminds me how there are some advantages to having no friends]) and began preproduction on some songs that will be making up part of our EP album coming out sometime later this year. For all of you that don’t know what this crazy preproduction process is, well let me explain.
preproduction [ˌpriːprəˈdʌkʃən]
n
preliminary work on or trial production of a play, industrial prototype, etc.
Aftermath of the Aging of the Ginger
Rous’ birthday weekend has ended, but the ringing in our ears from Mercury’s Rub-a-dub Dubstep night has not. Totally worth it.
As you may or may not know, our rhythm section have finished their exams, and are finally on holiday, which means more free time to put into Forefront for the next month and a bit. We’ve got a meeting in a couple of hours (we’ve finally managed to steal Taylor away from his busy schedule for an hour or so) which is certain to be filled with productivity, RayWilliamJohnson and whatever Jason has recorded on PVR. But seriously, we’ll be getting busy with a whole lot of cool stuff very soon.
So we’ve just released our first video and we’d love for you to check it out. It’s not a music video par say; it’s an EPK for our first band project “First and Foremost”. It’s got some interesting bits and pieces, interviews with the band, and us performing one of the tracks off the demo. It turned out to be quite a sick video, so be sure to check it out –
So It Begins
Wassup, yo
Ohey, it’s me again, the red one. I have good tidings, tidings of freedom and of celebration. And stuff. Yes, and stuff.
Today is Thursday, which is nice. It’s also very cold, which is also (in my opinion) nice. Aside from being a cold Thursday, today is also the last day of exams as far as band members are concerned, which, I dare say, is VERY nice. I was tempted to use a word other than “nice” there, but I thought “nice” would suffice. Twice. With rice. No dice? I’ll stop.
As you can imagine, we’re rather happy about this. Because in the same way Summer follows Spring, June follows May, and Taylor follows rugby scores; holidays follow exams. It is the natural way of things. And that, now that Zorba too has finished with exams, naturally leaves us squarely in the holidays and squarely in the being-more-productive-days too. Which is very nice indeed.
Story Time
So, here I am, planning get my first early night in weeks, listening to death metal, and writing a blog for the website. With the weather being so nice over the last few days we have had a few chances to “frolic” (as Nick would say) in the sunshine and get some inspiration.
This is a warning that new material is coming.
With such exciting activities as band practices, band meetings, and other “exciting activities”, the band has managed to throw some ideas on the table. Emails have been sent, applications have been filled, and studio time has been booked for the future, it’s gonna happen!
In other news Forefront also hit up a short set at Mercury – attended by some loyal fans whom we’d like to thank – and it turned out to be quite a night. Jason has now begun taking fan numbers after shows as well, but has bumped his gender ratio up to 55/45! You figure it out.
Now, time for a story.
Forefrontal
Greetings.
While things have been pretty hectic for us over here with the ginger and myself all up in the varsity exams, we didn’t want to let that affect our relationship with you. So we thought now would be a good time to shower you with Forefrontal stuff. So with our website out (Stuff Count: 1) we thought there are some more things we should be letting you know about.
Right now, while I type this, we’re actually putting our highly developed procrastinating skills to action by means of a band practice. We’ve been working on our set for Mercury on Monday (Stuff count: 2), and it’s sounding pretty epic. Come through and check it out. Bands start at 10.
I also thought I should share …for all of you who spend your free time tracking down the actual location of Nick’s house… we have some good news: Our YouTube channel is here! (SC: 3) This is a much better way to spend you free time, guaranteed. You can take my word for it; I’ve been to Nick’s house. On the other hand, he did mention that he does enjoy picking up phone numbers off the stage after shows. So don’t forget to throw him yours on Monday (Females preferably [60:40 ratio]). (more…)
Catch Up
Alriiiiiight, so its been a couple of days since we’ve launched the website, and so far so good! We’ve received some great feedback from fans and it seems that okes are digging the site, which is cool. The site itself is one of those wordpress thingy things that Jason has altered and changed and personalised – we think it looks pretty sick, and we hope you do too.
To be honest, the launching of the website has been the most exciting thing that’s happened in a little while – last gig we played was at Zula a couple of weeks ago (which went very well), and otherwise its been all quiet because our good ol’ rhythm section have varsity exams. But myself and Taylor have taken the time to work on some new material that we think is sounding rad, so that’s productive at least. We’re playing at Mercury on Monday, which we’re lank excited about, and may throw in that new stuff I was referring to now now, so come through and listen to the mentioned new stuff and tell us what you think.
Welcome, welcome…
Welcome, welcome. As you can see, we’ve made it “all up in the interwebs”, as some other popular South African artists might put it. We now have a page, and despite my suggestion of naming it ‘Jimmy’ being shot down, we’re all rather pleased with it.
So, the internet then, how does it work? I haven’t the foggiest, but thankfully Jason does. He also knows how design works, along with a great deal of other things, which is really convenient. From what I’ve managed to figure out, he designed the page and then summoned the mystical and majestic internet unicorn to carry it back to internet-land. Obviously there were more steps involved, but I’m pretty sure that’s the gist of it.
Forefront Band 